Born in 1959 in Sacramento, California, Jeff Adachi has been the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco since 2002. The son of an auto mechanic and a laboratory assistant, Mr. Adachi is a fourth-generation Japanese American whose parents and grandparents were interned during World War II. He currently heads an office that provides legal representation to over 25,000 indigent people charged with crimes each year. Before being elected as Public Defender, Mr. Adachi worked as a deputy public defender in San Francisco for 15 years and in private practice for 2 years.

As Public Defender, Mr. Adachi has been deeply involved in juvenile justice issues. In 2004, Mr. Adachi called for a moratorium on sending youth to the California Youth Authority, the state's facility for juvenile, after a series of reports revealed poor treatment of youth.

Mr. Adachi has been involved in many community based organizations and has advocated on issues affecting minority and disenfranchised communities. In 1995, Mr. Adachi founded the Asian AmericanArts Foundation, which produced the Golden Ring Awards from 1995-1999 the Asian Oscars which honored artists such as Chow Yun- fat, John Woo, Ming-Na Wen, Oliver Stone and others, and provided critical arts funding to emerging Asian American artists and arts organizations.

Most recently, Mr. Adachi launched an organization known as Bayview MAGIC (the Mobilization for Adolescent Growth in our Communities), which is a collaboration between 40 youth and family agencies in the predominantly African-American community in Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco. MAGIC brings juvenile justice stakeholders together with community leaders, youth agencies and others to provide greater support services to children and provide alternatives to youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system.

Recently, in 2006, he wrote, produced, and directed The Slanted Screen, a documentary film about stereotypical depictions of Asian males in American cinema. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Mutsuko and daughter Lauren.

Michael Omi is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and the recipient of UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award. He is the co-author of Racial Formation in the United States, a groundbreaking work that transformed how we understand the social and historical forces that give race its changing meaning over time and place. He has also written on racial theory and politics, Asian Americans and racial stratification, racial and ethnic classification and the Census, and both racist and anti-racist social movements.

Since 1995, he has been the co-editor of the book series on Asian American History and Culture at Temple University Press. He also serves on the editorial board of two journals, Contemporary Sociology and Race/Ethnicity.

He is a member and former chair of the Daniel E. Koshland Committee at the San Francisco Foundation, serves on the Project Advisory Board on Race and Human Variation for the American Anthropological Association, and is a founding board member of the Opportunity Agenda based in New York and Washington, D.C.

At present, Ms. Dinh is the head of school at Prospect Sierra School in El Cerrito, CA. She has been the principal at Metairie Park Country Day School, upper school head at Wilmington Friends School, English teacher and chair at Episcopal Academy as well as founded and directed a temporary school to educate pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita within weeks after the flooding of New Orleans. She also taught at, founded and was a key administrator at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School, a school serving underprivileged students beginning in grade six, combining best practices in pedagogy of the East and West. Mandarin Chinese was compulsory for every student.

Ms. Dinh graduated Harvard University and University of Virginia. She is married to Thomas “Woody” Price, Head of School at The Branson School in Ross, CA. Son Henry Binh Dinh-Price was born in 2003.

Anisha Desai currently works at the Women of Color Resource Center, having previously been Deputy Director at United for a Fair Economy in Boston, where she had oversight over a national economic justice program. She has co-authored publications on fair taxation, housing and the racial wealth divide. Anisha has given workshops and presentations for the Western States Center's Community Strategic Training Initiative, the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative, RESULTS Nonprofit Grassroots Advocacy Organization, the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) among others. She has also served as a consultant to independent and public schools, social justice organizations and journalists on the topics of education reform, youth at risk, anti-oppression work and strategic change planning.

With a background in education, youth development, community organizing and social justice work, Anisha served for three years as the director of a social justice program at a San Francisco independent high school, prior to her tenure at United for a Fair Economy. Here she helped expand a community service learning program into a social and racial justice program. She has taught courses on youth rights and activism, and became deeply involved with educators of color, pan-African and South Asians networks in the Bay Area. She traveled to Rwanda where she studied post-genocide reconciliation efforts and shared her experiences with various activist circles in the United States.

Anisha has done PhD work at the University of California of Berkeley and has focused on consciousness raising projects amongst South Asian youth in the South. Anisha earned a Masters of Education in Risk and Prevention at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree in African-American Literature, Psychology and Secondary Education from the University of Miami in Florida.

Jane Kim is a Commissioner on the Board of Education in the City and County of San Francisco. She is currently the youngest elected official and first Korean American elected in San Francisco. Before being elected to the Board of Education in November 2006, Jane was the Youth Program Director at the Chinatown Community Development Center, a 28 year-old affordable housing nonprofit that also engages in community organizing, education and planning. For six years, she worked with over 200 San Francisco high school students developing youth leadership, advocacy and civic engagement through youth-initiated community service projects.

Previously, Jane was a fellow at Greenlining Institute, where she advocated for a range of issues, including consumer protection, access to higher education and universal lifeline issues, for low-income communities of color and immigrant communities.

She is also a co-director and co-founder of Locus Arts, a volunteer-run venue in San Francisco that showcases emerging musicians, writers, filmmakers and actors. Now, in its sixth year, Locus has showcased over 450 artists and reaches over 1500 audience members.

Jane is the past President of the San Francisco People's Organization and a past Board member of the Asian American Theater Company and the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club. In addition, she has served on the Proposition H Community Advisory Committee, Women's Foundation Community Action Grant Committee and the Full Circle Fund.

Outside of work, Jane has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and plays bass guitar. She completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford University in Political Science and Asian American Studies.

Sally Matsuishi is the President and CEO of Next Generation Scholars, a non-profit organization in San Rafael, California.  Next Generation Scholars serves under-privileged students in the community by providing college and graduate school counseling, psychological services, leadership training and supportive social services.  All the programs at Next Generation scholars are approached from the lens of ethnic studies and social justice, and are aimed at providing students with a clear, proud and multicultural education.  In addition to being the driving force behind Next Generation Scholars, Ms. Matsuishi has also worked as a consultant for both public and independent schools as well as educational foundations on issues related to educational access services for students of color.  Among her many other roles, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Marin Education Fund, the Asian American Alliance of Marin and the Action Coalition of People of Color.

Ms. Matsuishi is a past recipient of the “Volunteer of the Year” by the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership of Marin.  She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies and Art History from Vassar College and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California.